Davis Station is a transfer station serving the MBTA's rapid transit Red Line, located at Davis Square, the intersection of Holland Street, Elm Street, and College Avenue. By consequence of geography and system layout, Davis Station is one of only two rapid transit stations in Somerville, the other being Assembly on the Orange Line. It is bordered on both sides by stations that lie in Cambridge: Alewife and Porter.

Opened in 1985, Davis Station takes its name from Davis Square, which was named after Person Davis (1819-1894), a grain dealer who moved to the area in 1850 and built his estate near the intersection of Elm, Grove and Morrison Streets.[2]

Streetcars propelled the growth of West Somerville after 1858, and regular passenger rail was not far behind. Beginning in 1870, passenger service on the Lexington and Arlington branch of the Boston and Lowell Railroad (later succeeded by the Boston and Maine Railroad) came through Davis Square, with a "West Somerville" stop in the square. A station was built in 1888.[3] The streetcar and railroad service stimulated substantial development in the 1870s and 1880s as Davis Square quickly grew into an active commercial center. A boom in residential construction followed in the 1890s.[4]

In 1927, passenger rail service was re-routed, contributing to a decline in the area that became more severe after World War II. In the 1960s or 1970s, local officials and citizen groups successfully petitioned the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to create a Red Line subway stop in Somerville at Davis Square. Davis opened to passengers for the first time on December 8, 1984,[5] spurring major development and revitalization of the area.

As a part of the Red Line Northwest Extension, Davis was included as one of the stations involved in the Arts on the Line program. Arts on the Line was devised to bring art into the MBTA's subway stations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was the first program of its kind in the United States and became the model for similar drives for art across the country.[6]

Four of the original twenty artworks are located at Davis station.[7] These works are:

Ten Figures by James Tyler - Life-size people created out of cement, placed in areas around Davis Square

Children's Tile Mural by Jack Gregory and Joan Wye - Many tiles created by children placed on the brick wall of the station mezzanine. In 2009, a group of local artists attempted to find as many of the tile-makers as possible. The schoolchildren are now 35–45 years old[8]

Poetry by various poets - Lines of poems are embedded into bricks on the station platform floor